Tag Archives: Boeing

Gleeful Boeing hands first 787 to Japan’s ANA (Reuters)

  By | September 27, 2011 - 4:01 am | chompers Leave a comment

SEATTLE (Reuters) ? Boeing Co (BA.N) workers presented the company’s first 787 Dreamliner in the pouring rain to All Nippon Airways (9202.T) on Monday, capping nearly a decade of development of the world’s most advanced jetliner.

Around 500 Seattle workers flanked the gleaming, carbon-composite aircraft as it was slowly towed toward its Japanese buyers at a podium outside the planemaker’s mammoth Everett, Washington, production plant.

“It’s very exciting; I hope to ride on it someday,” said Jeffrey Goulet, a manufacturing planner on the 787 program at Everett, surrounded by several thousand Boeing employees, whooping with glee despite the constant rain.

“Embodied in this incredible machine are 95 years of Boeing aerospace know-how,” said Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney at the handover ceremony, acknowledging the long, rocky road the Dreamliner has traveled.

Supplier problems, late design changes and a two-month strike on the production line have put the new aircraft more than three years behind schedule.

Under Boeing’s program accounting — which allows it to smooth out costs over many years — McNerney said the 787 was already profitable. He said cash from sales of each plane will outweigh costs per plane later this decade.

Boeing shares rose 4.2 percent on Monday to close at $62.01 on the New York Stock Exchange. (Graphic on Dreamliner timeline: http://r.reuters.com/hyx83s )

“I cannot wait to see the day when the skies of the world are filled with 787s,” said ANA Chief Executive Shinichiro Ito, whose airline originally expected to receive its first 787 in May 2008.

Hundreds of Boeing workers were taught on the eve of the ceremony how to bow in unison as a mark of respect for ANA’s Ito, whose company formally took control of the first of its 55 Dreamliners on Sunday.

“Thank you for your patience,” one Boeing employee hollered at Ito during the ceremony.

The event was a tonic for Boeing workers after the last-minute cancellation of the delivery of the first 747-8 freighter to Cargolux last week, which was to have featured a performance by the Steve Miller Band.

HARD WORK AHEAD

The planemaker’s Everett wide-body production facility — where the handover ceremony took place — is packed with undelivered aircraft in a sign of an inventory build-up pegged at more than $16 billion, sitting on the Boeing balance sheet.

Dozens of aircraft were parked around the site in various stages of readiness, some with billowing plastic covers over their cockpits and engines or with weight-balancing yellow blocks hanging off the wings where the engines will be.

Investors are now waiting to see whether Boeing can pull a rabbit out a hat and meet its production goals after seven postponements adding up to more than three years of delays.

“Now is the time for Boeing looking forwards and not backward, concentrate on the manufacturing process and satisfy the customer,” said Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at London brokerage BGC Partners. “Once they do that the rest will fall into place.”

Boeing plans to lift production to 10 787 Dreamliners a month by the end of 2013, while also pushing up production of the 737 narrowbody, upgrading the same model and gearing up for production of a 767 aerial tanker for the U.S. Air Force.

“We’ll be at two and a half (787s per month) by the end of this year,” said Pat Shanahan, general manager of Boeing’s airplane programs, after the ceremony. Those planes will come from Everett, with a new plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, adding to the production.

Boeing is looking to raise that rate to 3.5 per month in the first part of next year, Boeing commercial planes chief Jim Albaugh later told reporters.

After seven delays, analysts say Boeing is under pressure to prevent further slippage.

“We share some apprehension with the market about the achievability of that plan, which will take us to a very high production rate for a wide-body aircraft,” said aerospace analyst Carter Copeland at Barclays Capital in New York.

“Given the stops and starts and problems it is natural for investors to have some concerns about achievability but the company seems confident.”

SURGE LINE

Boeing’s Everett plant contains four 787s in one bay of its giant assembly hall, with other 787s parked in an area set aside for completion work. Each aircraft currently stays for 10 days at each point on the line, but this will have to be accelerated as production increases.

The main line is designed to rise to seven aircraft a month. A second temporary “surge” line is being readied to tackle three aircraft a month when necessary and the facility in South Carolina will assemble three a month.

The surge line will partly allow Boeing to smooth out alterations of production flow between two models of the aircraft currently on sale.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher and Bill Rigby in Seattle, additional reporting by Kyle Peterson in Chicago; editing by Matthew Lewis, Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/japan/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110926/bs_nm/us_boeing

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Boeing to deliver first 787 after years of delays

  By | September 25, 2011 - 8:01 am | chompers Leave a comment

FILE – In this July 13, 2011 file photo, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner taxis on the runway at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Boeing will deliver its first 787 jet Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011, to Japan’s All Nippon Airways. The new plane, which was supposed to be flying passengers three years ago, has been hampered by embarrassing delays. But now that it’s here, it will offer travelers much more comfort, open up new routes and provide airlines with significant fuel savings. (AP Photo, File)

FILE – In this July 13, 2011 file photo, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner taxis on the runway at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Boeing will deliver its first 787 jet Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011, to Japan’s All Nippon Airways. The new plane, which was supposed to be flying passengers three years ago, has been hampered by embarrassing delays. But now that it’s here, it will offer travelers much more comfort, open up new routes and provide airlines with significant fuel savings. (AP Photo, File)

FILE – In this Aug. 6, 2011 file photo, All Nippon Airways (ANA) pilot Yoshio Taneda does a walk-around during the reveal of the first Boeing 787 destined for use by launch customer ANA at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wash. Boeing will deliver its first 787 jet Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011, to Japan’s All Nippon Airways. The new plane, which was supposed to be flying passengers three years ago, has been hampered by embarrassing delays. But now that it’s here, it will offer travelers much more comfort, open up new routes and provide airlines with significant fuel savings. (AP Photo/seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo, File) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; SEATTLE TIMES OUT; TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Boeing delivers its first 787 jet on Sunday. It’s been a long time coming.

The new jet, which was supposed to be flying passengers three years ago, has been delayed by production and design problems. But now it’s here, and airlines expect it to offer travelers much more comfort, open up new routes and provide significant fuel savings.

The first one goes to Japan’s All Nippon Airways, which has been printing the 787 logo and “We Fly 1st” on its business cards for years.

Airlines love the jet, which Boeing calls the Dreamliner. They’ve ordered more than 800, well above levels for previous new jets.

“A lot of carriers are betting that this is going to be a winner,” says George Hamlin, president of Hamlin Transportation Consulting in Fairfax, Va.

Instead of the usual aluminum skin, most of the 787 is covered in carbon fiber, basically a high-tech plastic that is strong but lightweight. Military planes and portions of other jetliners have used that material for years, but this is the first time so much has been used on an airliner.

The new material brings improvements that passengers should notice.

Its strength allows windows to be bigger and higher, so passengers don’t have to hunch over to see the horizon. Electronic dimming replaces pull-down shades. That should mean you’ll no longer be blinded when the guy next to you falls asleep with the shade up.

Finally, the cabin is pressurized to the equivalent of 6,000 feet, instead of the usual 8,000 feet. That means air pressure will be closer to what passengers are used to on the ground. And without corrosion-prone aluminum skin, the humidity can be kept higher. Those two changes should reduce dry noses and throats.

All Nippon plans to begin flying the 787 from Tokyo to Okayama-Hiroshima on Nov. 11. The first international route will be Tokyo to Frankfurt starting in January.

The first U.S. customer is United Continental Holdings Inc., which will get its first 787s next year and plans to fly them between Houston and Auckland, New Zealand, and Houston and Lagos, Nigeria.

Those are good examples of “thin routes” that airlines say the 787 will be good for ? routes for which there is regular demand that won’t fill a larger plane. The 787′s size, fuel efficiency and long range should allow airlines to turn a profit on those routes.

The jet will be as much as 20 percent more fuel-efficient than planes it replaces. Its efficiency was a nice perk when Boeing first proposed the 787 in its current form in 2003. Now it’s essential for airlines dealing with high fuel costs.

Building an all-new plane like the 787 is a massive undertaking. Delays stacked up. Boeing was hit with an eight-week strike in 2008. It had to reinforce the spot where the 787′s wings meet the fuselage. In November, the company had to delay the plane further after an electrical fire forced a landing during a test flight.

Boeing expects to deliver a combined 25 to 30 of the 787s and new 747-8 this year. To meet the high demand. Boeing has set an ambitious goal of building 10 per month by the end of 2013. No one has ever made a large plane that fast.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group, thinks Boeing will miss that goal because the company hasn’t smoothed out its production process fully.

It’s also not clear when the 787 will make money. Boeing already took a $2.5 billion charge in 2009 on the program, and it owes additional money to customers for the late deliveries. Boeing executives have said they will announce when the jet will be profitable after the first one is delivered.

The 787 list price runs between $185 million and $218 million. Discounts on new jets are common, though. Aboulafia says it’s not clear how steep the discounts offered by Boeing were to lock in all the orders.

Boeing rival Airbus hopes to soon launch its new A350, also made with a significant amount of carbon composites. A successful 787 will put pressure on Airbus to meet its fuel-efficiency goals, and to deliver the plane on time.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-09-24-Boeing-First%20787/id-6fb6a167106540cf8fbc75a27ea7f6b6

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